warringstarsfandomcom-20200213-history
Life on the Margins
Make my home everywhere within the Four Seas. The Basics When you boil it down to the bare essentials, spacers take cargo from Point A to Point B for fame (infamy) and profit (even just a little). Sometimes they'll collect the cargo themselves - as with those spacers who specialize in xeno-archaeology Beyond the Gap or in small-claim mining - more often they'll be contracted to deliver it. As for what that cargo might be, there's thousands of different things. Some of the most common spacer cargoes are seeds (useful for small, marginal starter colonies), people (light transports are a lot cheaper than passenger liners and more likely to go off the beaten path), water (not exactly hard to find in a solar system, but asteroid and orbital facilities always need it), and the ever-popular and ever-widening umbrella category of 'contraband'. Assuming one avoids any mishaps between Point A and Point B, a spacer is left with pure profit... minus the costs of retuning the ship's kuangium coils, replacing that blown power regulator, patching up the contraband compartment covers, and paying the crew, of course. Spacer Lingo There's a few words that every self-respecting spacer knows by heart. While not every spacer speaks English, Venetian, Putonghua or Cantonese, odds are that he'll still recognize any of the following words in any one of those languages. If not, the potential for comedy (or tragedy) is great. English - Venetian - Putonghua - Cantonese * Cargo - Càrigo - Huoyun - Fowan * Contraband - Contrabàndo - Weijinpin - Waigamban * Danger - Rìxego - Weixian - Ngaihim * Fuel - Combustibile - Ranliao - Jinliu * Gun - Sciopéto - Qiang - Coeng * Help! - Agiùto! - Jiumìng! - Gaumeng! * Hidden cargo - Càrigo scónto - Yincang de huoyun - Jancong dik fowan * Hide! - Scóndere! - Duocang! - Docong! * Hide the cargo! - Scondé el càrigo! - Ba huo cang qi lai! - Cimfuk fo baa! * Idiot - Patàn - Bendan - Bandaan * Inspection - Soralògo - Jiancha - Gimcaa * Kuangium - Koangio - Kuangjin - Kwonggam * Policeman - Tubo - Jingcha - Gingcaat * Profit - Vantàjo - Shouyi - Saujik * Reward - Corisponsión - Baochou - Boucau * Spacer - Viagiatór - Taikongyuang - Taaihungjyun * Spaceship - Nave spasiałe - Taikonghang - Taaihunghong * Tax - Inpòsta - Shui - Seoi * Vaccuum - Vòid - Zhenkong - Zanhung * Warning - Avìxo - Jianjie - Gaamgaai Threats to Life and Limb The Competition The spacer community can be ruthless. If there's blood in the water... Current Currency * Zhongguo - 元 - Yuan * Arab Union - ن - Najmah (replacing the Dinar, still used in the Arab Rim and by rebels and the black market in the Union) * British Commonwealth - £ - Pound * French Republic - ☆ - Étoile * Lagidze Confederation - ა - Abazi * Qianzhou - 元 - Yuan (Qianyuan when contrasted with the Zhongguo Yuan) * Sinha Reaches - रू - Rupiya * Tingwok Republic - 元 - Jyun * United States of Orion - $ - Dollar * The Free Worlds use a bewildering variety of currencies, of which the more common ones are the Eridani (€), the Aurigan Peseta (Pta), the Persian Rial ® and the Japanese Yen (¥). The Zhongguo Yuan is also widely accepted, at least in spaceports and space stations. * All Border planets have their own currencies (such as the Stratford Pound Ƶ), but the currency of their 'protector' nation is also globally accepted. Lawmen There are two types of law enforcement officers that spacers generally need to worry about: planetary police and space patrols. Police are police, no matter what the century. Although there are times when police forces 'retreat' into an emphasis on security cameras and centralized response teams, the present generation generally favors the tried and true beat cop approach. Every space port in the galaxy is home to hundreds of police officers on patrol, keeping an eye out for any shady business and generally forcing the forces of crime and disorder to keep their heads down. Generally speaking, there are good cops, bad cops and ugly cops. Good cops don't bother law-abiding citizens, so naturally spacers have to keep an eye out for them. They might look the other way on a minor infraction, but bribery's always got a risk of backfiring with these sorts. Bad cops, you can bribe, at least for most things, but the bigger the crime, the bigger the bribe. When it comes to ugly cops, the kind who almost always end up in prison or dead (or in prison and then dead), the smart spacer does whatever it takes to avoid giving offense and then goes away. Far away. Off world, the responsibility of meting out law and order falls on space patrols. These paramilitary organizations are operated either by the navy proper or as a separate service. The United States Orbital Guard is a typical patrol service in that it carries out a variety of duties (such as port, orbital and in-system security, contraband interdiction, commerce protection, and search and rescue). The USOG and similar services are the defensive half of anti-piracy, fighting off pirate attacks on merchant ships and intercepting hijacked vessels while the offensive task of tracking down and destroying pirate bases is left to the navy. Bribery is always an option and always a risk. Bounty Hunters Bounty hunters are the very long arm of the law. Most nations have less than perfect records when it comes to law enforcement cooperation, so bounty hunters have stepped in. As impartial agents, they can do the job without regard for local feelings. Of course, this means most local police officers hate them. They're unaccountable, all-too-often excessively violent, and sometimes make more money than the typical police officer (and when they don't, they're still thought of as doing so). Legally speaking, bounty hunters are required to have operating licenses in any nation they enter. Black market bounty hunters generally ignore this occasionally expensive restriction, but penalties for unauthorized bounty hunting (aka kidnapping) can be very severe. Most legal bounty hunters operate in a single nation to avoid the fees and problems, but this puts the most resourceful (and also lucrative) bounties out of their reach. Pirates Space patrols and bounty hunters can be more than a nuisance, but they're rarely outright lethal. The same can't really be said for pirates. While some pirates live up to the Gentleman Pirate ideal, most of them are bad news in a big way. Many are hard-core shuzi (a resin-based drug similar to qat) addicts and live in a hazy waking dream, much to the terror of their victims. At the present time, some of the more infamous pirate gangs include the Black Skulls (former military types, active throughout the Anglosphere), the Sons of Hundun (operating in the Borders since 2485 or so) and les Requins Tigres (a rag-tag Franco-Arabic gang that has split and reformed several times over the last twenty years). Natural Disasters Space travel is largely safe (assuming your ship is in good condition), but things can happen. One of the worst of these 'things' is the phenomenon known as Chan Ribbonlets. Chan Ribbonlets are essentially tiny strings of the same particles that make up the Great Wall. They are virtually undetectable except at very close range and, since they are only an issue for ships traveling the vast reaches of interstellar space, entirely undetectable for practical purposes. A ship that runs into Chan Ribbonlets while blinking from one system to another is jerked back into real space - often tens of light years from any planet, moon, asteroid or ship. Worse yet, the forced reversion often causes major systems damage to a ship, especially an older or simply designed ship (as spacer craft tend to be). Other, less common worries for spacers include spatial distortions, bizarre 'wrinkles' or 'ruts' in the very fabric of space (as the more lurid tales put it). There are even rumors (always second-hand, at best) of naturally occurring 'blink tunnels' leading to distant parts of the galaxy - or even beyond. Strange Tales from the Beyond Introduction The region beyond the Lagidze Gap is formally known as Translagidzia, but all self-respecting spacers just call it the Beyond. The Beyond is, in the popular imagination, a mysterious and downright unsettling terra incognita where almost anything can be experienced. In this case, at least, the popular imagination isn’t far off. Translagidzia is full of oddities, natural, artificial and inexplicable, and sensible spacers admit they never know what to expect when they blink into the Beyond. The Aigeiros Sphere The Sphere is a strange object, its outer layer composed of the synthetic element hassium, found drifting in deep space entirely by accident when the blink drive of a French scout ship shorted out a half-light year shy of its destination system. Ten years of effort have failed to open the sphere, and an odd electromagnetic field prevents any internal scans. The sphere is covered with as yet undeciphered writings that have a strong similarity to those found in the ruins on the planet Sati. Black Hole 17 This black hole, a blink or two beyond the farthest Beyond colony, is a complete enigma. Fourteen years ago, a Zhongguoan corporate probe circling the black hole at a safe distance picked up a faint transmission – a transmission coming from within the black hole. Since then, signals have been detected over a dozen times, all clearly coming from the black hole itself. This defies everything known about black holes, and no credible explanation has been put forward. The Blue Eyed Comet The Blue Eyed "Comet" is a strange object indeed. It was initially mistaken for a comet, but later, more focused observation proved it to be an artificial object speeding through space at about 1/10th the speed of light. The 'tail' is actually a string of debris (also artificial - strictly artificial, in fact) that defies explanation; how does the 'comet' manage to avoid picking up natural debris in its wake, and what keeps the artificial tail perfectly intact and identical over the long journey through space? For that matter, where does it come from, and where is it going? The origin is unknown, but the destination is apparently through the gap - into the heart of human space. The Clouds of Ylil Ylil (a name of uncertain origin, although it may have been taken from a short story in a Tingwokese cheapie) is an empty and generally uninteresting planet where the native 'life' is strange grey clouds that float around, apparently under their own or someone else's guidance. They seem to react, if not respond, to communication. Some of humanity's best xenobiologists have flocked to Ylil for nearly a generation, but are no closer to finding answers now than they were in the beginning. Desolation Alley Desolation Alley is the name for a group of eight star systems where all the worlds have been reduced to toxic hellholes by massive radioactive bombardment. The identity of the inhabitants of the planets remains unknown, as does the identity of the attackers. Neither side was human, of course, and the similarities between Desolation Alley and Diqiu after the Cull are just slightly unnerving. Even more unnerving is the fact that Desolation Alley was apparently rendered desolate in the last hundred years or so. The Drukh Fragments Drukh is a dim red dwarf star on the inward edge of the Beyond. It is surrounded by a fragmented cocoon of artificial habitats, the shattered remnants of what was once a Dyson sphere. Less than one in a thousand pieces of the sphere remain, and all of them have been twisted by a heavy bombardment of deadly gamma and microwave radiation. Nothing salvageable remains, and none of the planets inside the sphere can sustain any life, let alone intelligent life. If the Lagidzean Navy discoverers know more, they are keeping it a very closely guarded secret. FQY7783-A Nebula This otherwise unremarkable nebula not far from the Gap is a galactic curiosity. It is the apparent source of odd radio messages broadcasted in Morse Code. The code is accurate, but the messages themselves are almost always gibberish - random strings of unrelated words or, at best, phrases that barely make sense (such as "Good boy wash the windows", which was repeated eighteen hundred times over the course of six weeks). Repeated expeditions into the nebula have failed to find any trace of who (or what) sends out the strange signals. The Graveyard The Graveyard is the popular name for the Oph 162225-240515 system, consisting of a pair of brown dwarf stars forming a binary star. The system is also home to the wrecks of hundreds of starships of all known designs, and a few unknown (but clearly human) ones. The ships drift in loose orbits around one or the other of the brown dwarfs, utterly inert and abandoned. None of them show any signs of damage or have any bodies aboard, none have any functioning machinery or computers. No one has ever seen one arrive in the system, nor disappear from the rest of space. As far as anyone can tell, something happens to the ships, and then they appear in the Graveyard. A few have been removed, but no crew will willingly serve aboard a recovery from the Graveyard. Le Marché Le Marché is an interstellar marketplace. It consists of three large, hollowed-out asteroids that have been linked together and fitted with a single powerful blink drive. Thus equipped, Le Marché travels known space, usually the Free Worlds. It is rumored to have been built and operated by the notorious French spacer André Gauthey. Le Marché’s route is a very closely guarded secret, and access to the asteroid bazaar is extremely exclusive. Anything – literally anything up to and including planets – can be bought and sold at le Marché. Spacer rumors also say that le Marché has the best bars and the wildest parties in the galaxy. The Lost World The so-called Lost World is (was?) a strange, largely rain forest planet. First discovered by the joint British-Lagidzean Hawking Seven expedition in 2411, the planet was settled shortly thereafter. Explorers discovered a temple complex and entered it, finding many alien artifacts taken from various worlds all over the near Beyond. Then the planet disappeared - vanishing out of its orbit - and hasn't been seen since. The first ship to discover the planet had disappeared received coordinates for outbound travel transmitted from the outpost, but a later check with an in-system probe showed the planet had disappeared five minutes before the last communication could happen. There are some spacers who claim the Lost World (its name varies with the teller) was never discovered at all, but others claim to find proof in the perturbed orbits of the other worlds in system that something was there. The Pyramid of Milz This strange structure, located on the distant planet of LTM 1103AM, is shaped like an inverted pyramid. Instead of rising into the sky, it cuts deep into the ground. From high above, observers have sometimes seen (and recorded) flashes of light in the depths of the pyramid, but repeated excavations have uncovered nothing that could be reflecting or transmitting the light. The pyramid itself is the only artificial structure on LTM 1103AM, adding greatly to the mystery. The Antédiluviens have tried to get permits from the Lagidzean authorities to study the pyramid, but have been consistently refused; a handful of bold Antédiluviens who tried to sneak in were arrested and then deported. The Sabre Signal Thirty years ago, the so-called Sabre Signal was discovered. This mysterious broadcast, picked up by the British deep space survey vessel Sabre, is said to show mind-bendingly bizarre images of an alien species engaged in unguessable activities. The exact contents of the signal, which has never been picked up since, remain a Commonwealth secret locked deep away in Baldwin Tower, the headquarters of MI6. Half the crew of the Sabre later ended up in institutions for the violently insane. Most of the rest simply disappeared. It is believed the origin of the signal is the star QZ-2208, over thirty thousand light years away and far beyond the Great Wall. Song of the Void Several hundred light years from the FQY7783-A Nebula, on the very edge of explored space, is the Void, a patch of space a few light years in diameter that has a reputation as a place ships go to die - or rather, disappear. No ship (or automated probe) that has ever entered the Void has returned. Things do come out of the void, though - broadcasts, to be precise. Only after a few years of puzzlement did researchers realize the broadcasts were the same as those attached to the ancient Voyager probes... probes that should never have come anywhere near the Void. black hole.jpg|Black Hole 17 Desolation Alley ruins.jpg|Desolation Alley ruins FQY7783-A Nebula.jpg|FQY7783-A Nebula The Graveyard.jpg|The Graveyard Le Marché.jpg|Le Marché Lost World ruins.jpg|Lost World ruins (artist impression) Civilian Starships Passenger liner Length: 400 meters Crew: 200; 100-800 passengers Speed: 75 AU/hr Range: 50 light years Armament: None The mainstay of interstellar travel, passenger liners are simple enough - a cockpit, a passenger cabin and a blink drive. Their layouts and passenger numbers vary depending on the operator, but a typical long range liner will carry 500 or so passengers in three partitioned cabins (first/imperial, executive and standard - ranging from luxurious to acceptable). Thanks to the way blink travel works, most of the actual journey time is taken up by leaving first planetary orbit and then the system itself. A few passenger liners run tours, shuttling their passengers down to planets for a day or two while the kuangium coils are realigned for the next stage of the tour. Sylphe-class light transport Length: 30 meters Crew: 4-10 Speed: 100 AU/hr Range: 35 light years Armament: 1 close-in rail gun Light transports are the most common class of transport vessel in known space. They are small, typically carrying between 100 and 1000 tons of cargo, and affordable enough to be within the reach of most ambitious spacers. Some have been bought and converted into star yachts by the very wealthy, others are given slightly upgraded armaments and put into service as pirate or smuggler ships and a very few receive complete overhauls to make them suitable as spy ships. One of the most common models is the French Sylphe. The Sylphe, designed early in the Franco-Eridani War as an orbit-to-surface troop carrier, is a very simple and robust transport. Over 20,000 were built during the Franco-Eridani War and the later War of the Dauphins. Since the end of the War of the Dauphins, thousands of disarmed Sylphes have found their way into the private sector. They are cheap and reliable, making them a very popular purchase among small corporations and independent spacers. Their only drawback is their relatively short range, although it is possible to install more robust blink drives. TL400 supertransport Length: 1200 meters Crew: 40 Speed: 60 AU/hr Range: 40 light years Armament: 4 close-in rail guns Supertransports, of which the TL400 is a typical and popular design, are the backbone of interstellar commerce and carry millions of tons of cargo from star to star. While lightly armed, most supertransports carry sizeable numbers of well-trained and well-armed guards to protect their cargo. In addition, most companies arrange escort vessels to ferry their transports to their point of departure and meet them at their point of arrival. Only exceptionally large groups of pirates or privateers have any realistic hope of seizing a supertransport convoy. Xuanlong-class light transport Length: 38 meters Crew: 6-12 Speed: 90 AU/hr Range: 40 light years Armament: 1 close-in rail gun The Xuanlongs are an attempt by the Longqi Space Industry Corporation to edge in on the light transport market currently dominated by the Sylphe-class. Xuanlongs are larger vessels, have a slightly greater cargo capacity, much more comfortable crew quarters, a considerably longer range, and more advanced electronics. They are also nearly 40% more expensive than a Sylphe, and not nearly as easy to customize. So far, the Sylphe remains the king of light transports, but many corporate clients with deep pockets have begun to invest in fleets of Xuanlongs. Zhou Man-class survey ship Length: 28 meters Crew: 4 Speed: 135 AU/hr Range: 40 light years Armament: none Exploration of the Beyond is a booming business, and exploration of 'known' space (still full of 'here be dragons' zones) isn't far behind it. One ship designed just for exploration is the Zhou Man-class survey ship. Intended for long range journeys, the Zhou Man has enough cargo space to allow a typical four person crew to survive for months without returning to a friendly port. It also has the best detection gear (including a half-dozen mini-sats for orbital mapping) this side of a military vessel. Some spacers and businessmen have converted their Zhou Mans to other uses (it makes an excellent personal transport), and customs fleets make a habit of thoroughly searching any they come across. passenger liner.jpg|Passenger liner Sylphe-class light transport.jpg|Sylphe-class light transport TL400 supertransport.jpg|TL400 supertransport Xuanlong-class light transport.jpg|Xuanlong-class light transport Zhou Man-class survey ship.jpg|Zhou Man-class survey ship